Sometimes, Dead is Better
by NakanoHana
Summary: Halloween fic for 2011. Based off my first Steven King AND first horror story, Pet Sematary. Axel's demonic shadows come back to haunt him. He has to learn that sometimes, dead really is better. cursing, violence,


The clock on the kitchen wall normally ticked so softly, it's little blue pendulum swishing this way and that. Like a little curious cat tail, swishing back and forth, back and forth...

Tonight the ticks seemed much louder, counting down to the midnight hour almost frantically. Just ticking, ticking, ticking away...

And yet, Axel sat calmly on the floor, his back leaning heavily against the dishwasher. To a passerby, he looked like the average man...well, he would, without the hair. A man barely out of his twenties, Axel was broad shouldered and a muscular set of arms and torso. To a passerby, this was just the quiet little home on the edge of the quiet little forest, just barely standing within the county lies of Ludlow. To a passerby, this house and this man had a family; an unusual one to say the least, as the often gossipy housewives of Ludlow would often whisper amongst each other. But a family none the less. A sweet little girl named Namine; the cutest little fucker you'll ever see in diapers, Sora; and of course...

Axel shuffled the card pack absently in his hands, before laying a row of them out on the tile. Only one of the cards was facing up.

"The red king, huh?" With a dry, humorless chuckle, the man set about repeating the deal, leaving the face up card alone. He would come back to it later.

As he went through the cards, counting them slowly in his mind, occasionally following the sound of the ticks, he tries to distract himself from the state of the room. A bottle of Everclear sits on the table not too far away, next to two empty glasses. That will come later, just as soon as-

_Bong...Bong...Bong..._

Axel's ears perked up slightly, and he managed a grin. The sound was slow, meandering, taking its damn time already. And yet so loud. He almost wondered how a little thing like that, that stupid little german clock his mother had given to him when he was hardly higher than her waist, could bellow like that. And so slowly...

_'Get to the point already.'_

Forcing himself to be patient, Axel bent back over his cards and began counting again.

_'Two of clubs...six of spades. What the hell am I going to do with spades?'_

There wasn't much more he could do now. He had already dug himself in deep here, and the soil was too hard to claw out. Even if he could, Axel wasn't sure he had the strength to fight it anymore.

_"You did the right thing." _A familiar voice whispered in his ear; ghostly, thin, and yet still so full of malice. The man shuddered a bit, then nodded.

"Right. I did. I waited too long with Sora."

_"It'll work this time. You know it will."_

Axel nodded again, picking up a joker and inspecting it a moment before casting it to his side.

Yes. It would work this time. Fuck Zexion. It was going to work. And once it did, he'd be sure to call Larxene up again, tell her that everything was alright. That Namine could-

The wind outside the kitchen window howled, and the tree branches slapped against the glass, scraping and screeching here and there. Surprisingly, Axel didn't flinch. He paused for a moment and looked up, three cards clutched tightly in his hands.

The world beyond the small window was pitch black. There was no longer any light coming from the house across the road, and tonight the stars seemed to be against him, blinking out their lights slowly, one by one, leaving nothing but an eery, distant moon. But Axel hadn't faltered, or run. He walked down that little tended path the same way he had the night before, though tonight he had been more sure-footed, convicted. Tonight, as he had trekked through those dark, foreboding woods, there were no illusions there to frighten him; no Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, stalking behind him like the grim reaper itself. No...Axel had walked that path, climbed that blasted deadfall, and made it all the way up _there..._

Then, dirty and disheveled and looking like hell, he'd stumbled back here. To this place, that once had seemed so much like home. Now...now, it was deathly quiet. No mice, even though the cat was gone for good now. No nothing, only silence...

And then, the creak of the door leading into the kitchen.

Instantly, Axel was awake; his head snapping up quickly, craving emerald eyes fixed upon the door as it opened slowly...

A mangled, ratty tenis shoe found its way onto the tile, pushing through the door, and Axel gasped. A melted, almost blissful look crossed his face, the cards falling from his hands and onto the game, as the figure stepped in all the way.

The shoe on the other foot was missing, and a holey, dirty sock clung tightly to his skin, almost suffocatingly tight. As Axel's eyes roamed upward, he caught sight of tears, gashes, and a rusty, faded color that covered part of the ruined shirt and pants. Funny... the wounds matched Axel's almost perfectly, though the redhead's were a little bit fresher.

The figure stopped in front of him, and instantly Axel looked up to meet his eyes. The once blue, vibrant pools of wonder that had been his eyes were now ruined. One eye was yellow and narrow, like a wolf's eye, though it stared off into space a little bit. The other eye was almost completely gone; stabbed out of his socket by a sharpened scalpel. What was left of it focused on Axel, and if it was at all possible, he grinned, looking even more crazed than man before him, hunched slightly, hair whitening and falling out in places. It was a tough contest to see which of the two looked more like death.

_'Oz the Gweat and Tewwible...'_

"Heya, Doc. Did ya miss me?"

The older man choked a bit on a laugh, his face still blissful, even when face with this corpse, this distorted, tortured picture of death before him. And somewhere inside, a little voice was whispering, whimpering, over and over again, '_What have you done? what have you done?...'_

"You have no idea, kiddo."

His casual tone was ruined by the sniffle, and Roxas rolled his (arguably) good eye before extending a sliced, battered, dirty hand out to him.

"Black king on the red king..."

Axel blinked, accepting the hand that helped him to his feet. Suddenly he felt weak in the knees, and he carefully gripped the edge of the counter to steady himself. "What was that?"

The dirty blonde pointed down at the cards on the floor. At the risk of vertigo, Axel bent and saw that he had dropped some of the cards. There, sitting on top of his face card, almost completely obscuring it, was the black king of spades.

Axel hummed uncertainly. Funny...the spade looked like a black heart turned upside down. Boy, was _that_ the story of his life.

The redhead reached out and brushed his fingers along that once smooth cheek. "You came back..." he said with a smile. Almost disbelieving.

For once since he got back, the blonde smiled sweetly, almost knocking the air out of Axel's lungs in doing so. Never mind that a walking corpse was getting him bothered, but that smile did to him what it always did to him. Melted him like butter...

"Of course, dummy. And now, you've got something coming to you as well..."

The redhead blinked at the sudden malicious tone, seeing Roxas's eye turn crazed in seconds. Giggling like mad, Roxas quickly pulled a larger knife from the drawer beside him and lunged at Axel, who just barely caught him without nicking himself on the edge.

"Roxas, no! W-Why are you doing this?" he begged, trying to wrestle the knife away from his husband. When had skinny little Roxas gotten so strong?

"Is it really _that _surprising, Axel?" the younger man laughed again, pushing harder, and Axel winced as he felt some of his gauges reopening. "I'm baaaaaaccck. With Sora and Vexen, too. And we're gonna give it to you alright."

"No!"

"Hah! No? Is that all you can say? _Noooo-oooo!" _Roxas mocked, his voice sing-songed and infantile all of the sudden. Almost like..." Yay! Now I get to play with Daddy again!"

Axel paused, shocked. "S..Sora?" It couldn't be...

"Daddy!" That voice nearly broke him again. Having fought with Sora, _his little boy Sora, _he'd had to stab him.

Oh god, why does the torment never seem to end?

"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" Axel screamed, practically in tears. Roxas just laughed at him again, in that same sweet voice he had once cherished, and turned the knife sharply by its handle, catching the older man's wrist.

Axel screamed and fell to the ground, once again back up against the dishwasher. Roxas loomed over him, seeming to be in no hurry to stab him right away, though he did make a few shallow jabs here and there, smirking every time Axel screamed in burning agony. The younger man finally stepped back, looking down at the man crouched fetally in the little corner of the kitchen, and cackled.

"Why Axel, don't be coy. I think you know perfectly well what they want."

The redhead gasped again, looking up to see an old man with long, greying blonde hair and icy, murderous eyes. His frame was sickeningly thin and mangled; ribs sticking out through the fabric of his black coat.

"Y-You're...Vexen..."

"Thaaaaaaaat's right!" the man cackled madly. "Did dear little Roxas tell you all about big, bad me?"

"F...F-Fuck off! Let him go!" Axel shouted. He wanted to believe his beloved and son were still in that body somewhere, trapped together, begging to escape this nightma-

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Vexen plunged the knife into his left shoulder, clenching his fist around the handle as it drove deeper into flesh and blood.

"Feel that pain, lovely? THAT," he emphasized with another quick, painful jab, "is how it FEELS! To be DRAGGED out of REST, just to entertain SELFISH MORTALS! " Every shriek, he drove the knife in again, and again, and again...

Axel weakly grasped for the handle and shoved with all his might. But his strength was fading fast. He couldn't face this _thing, _this mangled corspe with two tortured souls tethered to it. The bitter anger seethed from them, palpable in the air.

"My, my. And I thought it was fun haunting my dear little brother's nightmares." As the phone started to ring, Vexen met his eyes and smirked evilly. "Shall I pick up and speak to my beloved parents again? Or, as them to put Nami on the phone. I'm sure she'd love to hear her _Daddy's _voice again."

"No, leave her alone!" Axel was choking on his own blood, but he didn't care. Even mentally slipping as he was, Axel was a good enough doctor to tell he wasn't going to last this fight. "Do what you want with me! I-I'm the one you want!"

Vexen paused, and smirked again, and soon the imagine dissolved back into Roxas. The younger man left his former husband on the ground, spluttering, gagging, wheezing for air that wasn't saturated with iron and water. The blonde poured himself a glass of Everclear from the table, took a quick sip, and sighed, happily. He poured another glass, and turned to face Axel, eyes glinting murderously, footsteps echoing across the kitchen. _Tick, tick, tick..._

"Damn straight, Darling. You fucked with Sora, you fucked with me, hell, you've fucked with that old fart across the street. So now I'm going to fuck with you, Doc, All. I. Want."


End file.
